Vincenzo Galdi

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vincenzo Galdi (photography by Wilhelm Plüschow, early 1890s)
Vincenzo Galdi in Pompeii (photography by Wilhelm Plüschow, around 1890)
The artist's mother (photograph by Vincenzo Galdi, late 19th century)

Vincenzo Galdi (born October 11, 1871 in Naples , † December 23, 1961 in Rome ) was an Italian photographer who was particularly successful with his nudes and erotic scenes . For several years he worked as a model and assistant to the photographer Wilhelm Plüschow , and for several decades as a gallery owner in Rome.

Beginnings in Naples

Galdi's father was also called Vincenzo Galdi, came from an old noble family (his ancestors had settled in Marigliano near Naples in the middle of the 18th century ) and was a banker and hat manufacturer. Galdi's mother, Rosa D'Amore, was the sister of the Mayor of Marigliano. The young Galdi studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Naples, and he also did an apprenticeship with the photographers Giorgio Sommer and Wilhelm Plüschow . From 1887–1890 he also worked as a set designer, musician and actor for the companies of Eduardo Scarpetta and others.

At the same time, Galdi became one of Wilhelm Plüschow's preferred models, and countless portraits and “classic” studies were created, for example in Plüschow's garden at Posillipo or in the Pompeian ruins.

Photographer in Rome

In the early 1890s, against the background of the poor economic situation in the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies , Galdi and Plüschow moved to Rome. Both opened studios in the new Ludovisi district . Galdi continued to work as Plushow's assistant, at least occasionally. Otherwise, he devoted himself to his own projects and had considerable business success. His customer base - like Plüschow and his cousin Wilhelm von Gloeden , who worked in Taormina - was mainly from "Germany, England and North America". Galdi's models were adolescents and adults, women and men, individuals and couples. Like Plüschow and Gloeden, Galdi “only rarely made corrections to the negative and print. Physical details - be it traces of the clothes worn, dirty hands and feet - emerged in the nude or portrait without glossing over ”. In addition, Galdi largely refrained from antiquing and exaggerating the scenes. His pictures were characterized by great directness and possibly also showed erections and erotic capers - they seemed "less academic in aesthetic terms".

The Fontana delle Naiadi in Piazza della Repubblica, Rome (photography by Paolo Monti, 1963)
Carlo Siligato with his portrait painted by Frank Brangwyn (photography by Vincenzo Galdi, 1906)

At the turn of the century, Galdi was indirectly involved in the redesign of the fountain on the Roman Piazza della Republicca. The sculptor Mario Rutelli , who had to replace four stone lions, asked Galdi for photographic templates for four naiads . In 1901 the Naiaden fountain was finished, but after protests against the "obscene" design it was immediately given a privacy screen. Only years later did the residents take the initiative and tear down the shed.

Galdi married the elementary school teacher Virginia Guglielmi (1885-1941) in 1902 and became a father in 1903 and 1904 (a third child was born in 1917). But the family man also continued to work in the photo studio. In 1906 he captured the young Sicilian Carlo Siligato, the partner of the British painter Robert Hawthorn Kitson , who lived in Taormina , in a series of photographs.

Gallery owner in Rome

In 1902, Plüschow was sentenced to eight months' imprisonment , “probably as a result of the scandal surrounding the industrialist Friedrich Alfred Krupp ”, for “common pomp and seduction of minors”. Because a long time had passed before the trial, perhaps "because the Italian authorities wanted to give as many people as possible the opportunity to escape from Rome and avoid appearing in court," Plüschow was released soon after his conviction and immediately resumed his business back on. Another scandal broke out in 1907 and Plüschow returned to Germany in 1910.

It appears that Galdi was also involved in the 1907 scandal. In any case, he too gave up his photo studio and instead opened an art gallery, the Galleria Galdi, which moved several times and existed in Via del Babuino until late in the 1950s. The Galleria Galdi was progressive and committed, among others, to the futurists Giacomo Balla and Umberto Boccioni and the Roman artists Pio Joris and Onorato Carlandi . A few years after the gallery closed, 90-year-old Galdi died in a Roman hospital.

resonance

The question of whether individual works can be assigned to Wilhelm von Gloeden or Wilhelm Plüschow and other works to Wilhelm Plüschow or Vincenzo Galdi has not yet been answered in many cases. This makes it difficult to characterize and appreciate the three artists. In addition, Galdi's résumé was almost completely in the dark until recently. A first solo exhibition took place in Paris in 2011, and a first, more comprehensive biography was presented in Rome in 2012. Galdi's photographs are traded on the art market, published in catalogs and exhibited in galleries. They are now also in the collections of important museums.

Information base

literature

  • Bernhard Albers (ed.): Wilhelm von Gloeden, Guglielmo Plüschow, Vincenzo Galdi. Nude photographs around 1900 . Changed second edition. Rimbaud, Aachen 2009, ISBN 978-3-89086-531-7 .
  • Nicole Canet (Ed.): Gloedeneries Caravagesques. Wilhelm von Gloeden, Guglielmo Plüschow, Vincenzo Galdi. Au Bonheur du Jour, Paris 2005.
  • Nicole Canet (ed.): Paradis sicilien. Wilhelm von Gloeden, Guglielmo Plüschow, Vincenzo Galdi . Au Bonheur du Jour, Paris 2008, ISBN 2-9523322-5-8 .
  • Nicole Canet (Ed.): Galdi secret . Au Bonheur du Jour, Paris 2011, ISBN 978-2-9532351-4-2 .
  • Nicole Canet (Ed.): Beautés siciliennes. Wilhelm von Gloeden, Guglielmo Plüschow, Vincenzo Galdi . Paris 2014, ISBN 978-2-9532351-7-3 .
  • Tommaso Dore: Galdi rivelato. L'eclettismo di Vincenzo Galdi, photographer e mercante d'arte. Galdi Revealed. The Eclecticism of Vincenzo Galdi, Photographer and Art Dealer . Bilingual edition. Italus, Rome 2012, ISBN 978-88-943006-2-8 .
  • Volker Janssen (ed.): Wilhelm von Gloeden, Wilhelm von Plüschow, Vincenzo Galdi. Italian photographs of young men around 1900 . Galerie Janssen, Berlin 1991, ISBN 978-3-925443-11-4 .
  • Joseph Kiermeier-Debre , Fritz Franz Vogel (ed.): Wilhelm von Gloeden - I too in Arcadia. The Heinz Peter Barandun Collection, Zurich . With works by Wilhelm von Gloeden, Guglielmo Plüschow, Gaetano d'Agata, Giovanni Crupi and Vincenzo Galdi. Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-20065-7 .
  • Tobias G. Natter, Peter Weiermair (Ed.): Et in Arcadia Ego. Turn of the century photographs. Wilhelm von Gloeden, Giuglielmo Plüschow, Vincenzo Galdi . Oehrli, Zurich 2000, ISBN 978-3-905597-20-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tommaso Dore: Galdi rivelato (see literature), p. 70.
  2. ↑ In Tommaso Dore: Galdi rivelato (see literature) there is a poster for a performance by the Alberto Cozzella and Vincenzo Esposito company on March 23, 1890.
  3. ↑ In this part of town are the streets Via Sardegna and Via Campagnia mentioned in Giovanni Dall'Orto's biography, see web links.
  4. ↑ In Giovanni Dall'Ortos biography, a corresponding letter from the American politician Theodore Dwight quoted, see Related links.
  5. ↑ a b c Quoted from Ulrich Pohlmann, see web links.
  6. ↑ Giovanni Dall'Orto says “meno studiato dal punto di vista estetico”, see web links.
  7. ^ Time Out Rome . Random House, London 2011, ISBN 978-1-84670-181-8 , p. 138.
  8. ↑ Mauretta Capuano: 'Taormina Cult' unveils Casa Cuseni's secret treasures. A unique villa in the heart of Taormina . Article on www.ansa.it (as of January 5, 2019). See also Charles Leslie: A Memory Of Taormina . Article on http://stonebarrow.org.uk (as of January 5, 2019). Siligato was the son of the builder who built Kitson's villa in Sicily, see David M. Boswell: The Kitsons and the Arts. A Leeding Family in Sicily and the West Riding . Doctoral thesis (English) on etheses.whiterose.ac.uk, Volume 1, p. 108 (as of January 5, 2019).
  9. ↑ See also Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach: Art and Politics . In: Michaela Lindinger (Ed.): Eccentricities, outsiders, femmes fatales. The "other" Vienna around 1900. Amalthea Signum Verlag, Vienna 2015, ISBN 978-3-85002-916-2 ( Google partial digitization , as of April 5, 2019).
  10. ↑ The quote from the writer Edward Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson alias Xavier Mayne can be found in Ulrich Pohlmann, see web links.
  11. ↑ This assumption by Giovanni Dall'Orto is also based on a Prime Stevenson quote, see web links.
  12. ↑ Exhibition dates on photography-now.com, see web links.
  13. ↑ An example is the J. Paul Getty Museum, see web links.
personal data
SURNAME Galdi, Vincenzo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian photographer
DATE OF BIRTH October 11, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH Naples
DATE OF DEATH December 23, 1961
Place of death Rome